We’ve reviewed quite a few laptops over the past couple of years here at Techaeris, as well as a couple of backpacks and other accessories. Our Lenovo Y Gaming Active Backpack review takes a look at one of Lenovo’s offerings for protecting your gaming gear while you carry it around and see how it stacks up.

Design

The Lenovo Y Gaming Active Backpack is constructed mostly of a black nylon fabric with red zippers. The bottom of the backpack is reinforced with a black flexible plastic piece. The adjustable straps of the backpack are padded with an adjustable chest strap, and join at the top with a carrying handle in case you wish to carry it by hand instead of on your back. One of the straps includes a metal round clip near the top. The back of the backpack features a ventilated, padded back which is quite comfortable when wearing.

The backpack consists of a total of five main compartments and eight additional pouches — 4 zippered, one velcroed, and three open. The main compartment sits right against your back, and is accessed by a zipper that goes partially down each side and across the top. This laptop compartment will fit a 17″ laptop easily. Inside this compartment is a thin padded strip which sits at the bottom for extra protection, I only had to take this out for one of the three 17″ laptops I tested in order to make it fit. The bulk of the storage is in the second compartment which, again, zips open with a zipper that goes almost to the bottom of each side of the backpack allowing for easy access to all the assorted pouches inside. Inside this large compartment are a zippered mesh pouch to store your mouse, a velcro flapped pouch to store a portable hard drive, a second zippered mesh pouch on the side against your laptop, and a large unzippered mesh pouch on the other side. Also included is a zippered bag to store your power cord. There’s also ample space in here to fit an Xbox One (and by extension a PS4 should fit in here as well), or pretty much anything else (within reason) that you want to bring along. My only minor complaint is that when storing a larger mouse, like the Lenovo Y Gaming Precision Mouse, in the mouse pouch, it is a bit of a tight fit, but it does fit nonetheless.

On the front of the backpack is the third compartment, with a hard shell front (featuring the Lenovo logo in red) for storing your gaming (or other) headphones. It’s quite large and I was able to fit the Lenovo Y Gaming Headset in there with no issues. The MW60 headphones also fit nicely so there shouldn’t be any issue storing on or over ear headphones in this compartment. Just below this compartment is another metal round clip. The last two compartments are on the left and right side, fairly narrow, and open almost fully with a zipper. Each compartment has a small open pouch on each side with an elastic top to keep them fairly closed, and on one side there’s a small flat zippered pouch between the compartment and the padded back of the laptop — just the right size to store a smartphone or portable battery pack. At the top of each of the side zippered compartments is another strap which goes from the back to the front of the backpack.

Overall the Lenovo Y Gaming Active Backpack has a stylish design. The red zipper and other accents are just enough to give it a bit of class, and it has more than enough compartments and pouches to carry all your gear.

Protection

The laptop compartment in the Lenovo Y Gaming Active Backpack is nicely padded, and as mentioned above there is also a removable pad that sits on the bottom for added protection if your laptop size allows it. Even without, the reinforced bottom gave me enough confidence that I didn’t find myself worrying about where or how I was setting down the bag. The hard shell headphone compartment is a nice touch as well and adds that extra level of protection for your headphones. Given the design and construction of the backpack, I’ve been confident my gear is fine during transportation in it.

Price/Value

The Lenovo Y Gaming Active Backpack is currently priced at $99.99USD/$114.99CAD on Lenovo’s website. You can also find it on Amazon for around $62USD/$65CAD (at the time of this review). Even at regular price, if you transport your laptop and other gaming gear around frequently, this backpack is money well spent — and even better money well spent at the price it’s currently going for on Amazon.

Wrap-up

If you take your laptop with you on the go frequently, you can’t go wrong with the Lenovo Y Active Gaming Backpack with its multiple compartments, extra padding, and comfort.

About Techaeris

Techaeris was founded in 2013 by Alex Hernandez and covers a spectrum of information related to technology, gaming, entertainment, science, art, photography and life. The mission of Techaeris is to offer honest reporting, unique stories, news coverage, product information and reviews, as well as social interaction with our readers. We strive to remain objective and open minded about technology and label opinion pieces as such. We’re glad you’ve decided to stop by and have a read. We hope you stay, invite some friends, and come back again and again!